Can a mother forget the babe at her
                                                            breast, and have no compassion on the
                                                            son she has borne?  Although she may
                                                            forget, yet I will not forget you. . .

                                                                                                 - Isaiah 49:15
            
      Jacob found the amulet in an old cigar box in the attic.  He wasn’t looking for it, or anything in particular really.  He just liked rooting around up there sometimes.  Especially on days when he didn’t want Mama to find him, and that was more often than not.
      She had a hangover today, like she did most Saturday mornings, and that always put her in a bad mood.  She wasn’t above smacking your face on days like that, so Jacob had decided it was best to disappear for a while.  Out of sight, out of mind. 
      It had been raining when he woke up this morning, so that meant he couldn’t leave the house.  His brother Joey was still asleep with his thumb in his mouth, and Jacob had kissed him and tucked him in a little tighter before he tiptoed across the creaky hardwood floor and pulled an old red t-shirt over his head.  Mama had kept both of them awake till almost two o’clock this morning before she finally passed out on the couch, and little ones needed their sleep.  Joey was four. . . not quite twelve years younger than his big brother, and Jacob loved him more than anything in the world.   
      Jacob had never been able to go back to sleep right after he woke up in the morning.  So he came up to the attic instead, where he could sit among Papaw’s old stuff and daydream a while.  No matter how much he looked, there was always something new to see.
      This morning, he was digging through an old army trunk which was full of assorted junk, mostly trinkets and souvenirs Papaw had brought back from Germany.  Most of them were tossed in the trunk carelessly, with no particular order.  Jacob picked up anything that looked interesting, played with it for a few minutes, and then put it back.  Once in a while he found something he especially liked, and these things he sometimes set aside to take downstairs.
      He found the cigar box in the bottom of the trunk under a piece of cardboard, almost like someone had tried to hide it down there.  That made him curious, so he pulled it out and blew dust off the lid, and tore off an old strip of duct tape that held it closed.  Inside he found some crumpled rice paper yellowed with age, and wrapped up inside it was a silver necklace with a small medallion-type amulet attached.  It was badly tarnished in spite of the wrapping, but there was no doubt what it was.
      Jacob was delighted.  Real treasure!
      There were seven blue gems set in a circle on the front of the medallion, but nothing else special about it that he could see.  He turned it over in his hands, discovering an inscription on the back which he couldn’t make out through the tarnish.  He spit on the edge of his shirt tail and rubbed hard until he could read it, but even then he was none the wiser.  The amulet simply said “Thumb here.”  The letters were sloppy and blocky, like someone had scratched them there with the point of a pocket knife.
      “Thumb here?” he repeated aloud, thinking to himself what a strange thing that was for someone to put on a piece of jewelry.  It was clear enough, though, so he shrugged his shoulders and stuck his thumb where it said, thinking how much nicer the amulet would look if it wasn’t covered with tarnish.    
      “Ow!” he cried wildly as a sharp pain stabbed his hand.  It felt like he was touching a hot coal, and he dropped the amulet instinctively.  He looked at his thumb and saw no visible cut or scratch.  It didn’t hurt anymore either, and his alarm changed quickly to puzzlement.  He flexed his hand, and it moved smoothly.  Nothing seemed to be hurt.  He listened to see if anybody was coming to check on him, but the house was silent.  Apparently he hadn’t been as loud as he thought.
      He stared down at the amulet suspiciously, and then cautiously prodded it with his big toe.  Nothing happened, but he noticed that the black tarnish was gone.  Silver gleamed brightly even in the weak light from the louvered window.  Eventually he got bold enough to pick it up by the chain and look more closely.  A ring of tiny words was now etched sharply into the gleaming surface around the edge of the medallion, but they looked like nothing Jacob had ever seen before.  Whatever language they were, he couldn’t understand them.
      That clumsy “thumb here” was still scratched into the surface on the back, and he could read that part just fine, but Jacob had no intention of following that advice again.  No thanks!
      He had no idea what had happened, or how the tarnish had suddenly disappeared, or what it was that hurt his finger.  But he was determined to find out.  He liked mysteries, and this was an especially interesting one.  So he thought back carefully, trying to remember every detail of the experience to see if there were any clues.
      Well, he’d been thinking the amulet would look nice if it was clean, and now there it was, just like he imagined it would be, with no polishing or anything.  He started to feel a tinge of excitement.  Jacob had always believed there had to be something more out there than just the dull and humdrum world he  was used to.  So when something magical was suddenly dropped in his lap, he wasn’t at all disbelieving, as some people might have been.  When reality is harsh, you learn very quickly to look beyond it.
      He soon decided it was worth hurting his thumb again, if that’s what it took to find out the truth.  He looked at his shirt tail, where the spit-and-tarnish mixture from earlier was gradually turning into a smudged brown stain, and decided that would make as good an  experiment as any.  Therefore he took the amulet in hand, and cautiously touched his thumb to the back.  There was no pain this time.
      “I wish my shirt was clean,” he said distinctly.  His head was full of vague ideas from a hundred fairy tales and movies about how things like this were supposed to work, but in this case he was disappointed.  Nothing happened.  Jacob wasn’t willing to give up yet, though.  He looked down at an old pair of socks on the floor.
      “Come here,” he ordered them in a firm tone.  Again nothing happened, and Jacob was frustrated.  What was he not doing right?
      He tried to recall again what he’d been doing when the tarnish disappeared.  He’d been looking at the amulet, thinking about how it would look if it was clean.  He hadn’t actually said a word, come to think of it.  He’d just thought it.  Okay then, so maybe he had to visualize what he wanted, instead of talking out loud.  He decided to try it again.
     This time he didn’t say anything, just envisioned the socks rising up off the floor and landing beside him on top of the trunk.  Now there was no doubt about it.  The socks floated obligingly off the floor and came to rest beside his elbow, exactly where he’d wanted them to go.  There was still no more pain though, and Jacob broke into a grin.
      “Yes!” he said to himself, jumping up with so much enthusiasm that he almost knocked his head against a rafter.  He lost interest in exploring the attic anymore that day.  He had something much more exciting than that now.  
     He opened the heavy attic door without a peep and crept stealthily down the uncarpeted stairs, stepping lightly and near the edges to avoid creaks.  A thin film of dusty grime had sifted out of the wallboards since the last time he swept,  and tiny particles of dust clung unpleasantly to the bottom of his bare feet every time he took a step.  He made a face and wished for the millionth time that it wasn’t so hard to keep the place clean.
     The kitchen was deserted when he got  to the bottom of the stairs, and he   surveyed the wreckage from last night glumly.  Glasses half full of unfinished milk from supper stood huddled together on the dull green Formica countertop, and dirty plates were piled high in the sink.  An empty vodka bottle lay at a drunken angle against the base of the refrigerator where Mama had thrown it, and a fleet of sodden cigarette butts floated grotesquely in a pool of spilled beer on the floor.  A slightly dried-out meatball lay in solitary splendor under Joey’s chair on a thin veneer of splattered spaghetti sauce.
     There was more, but Jacob had seen enough.  The cleanup job would be bad enough without having to think about it ahead of time.  
     Unless. . .
     He started to reach for the amulet, and then thought better of it.  It wouldn’t do for Mama to find out about it.  He could hear her in the bathroom, putting her makeup on.  Something clattered on the floor and he heard a curse.  It sounded like she was in an especially nasty mood, and he felt a strong urge to disappear again.  For a second, up in the attic, he’d completely forgotten about his mother, and that was always a serious mistake.
     He glanced outside.  The rain had stopped for now, and there was nothing to keep him from leaving the house for a while if he wanted to.  He had a mind to go out in the woods and see what the amulet could do, in a place where he wouldn’t be disturbed.  He was eager to find out.  But he hesitated, thinking about Joey.  He’d most likely sleep till noon after being up so late last night, but then again he might not, and he was usually cranky when he first woke up.  Mama didn’t handle things like that very well.  But on the other hand, Jacob didn’t relish the idea of taking Joey with him and letting him find out about the amulet either.  It was impossible for him to keep a secret unless he immediately forgot about it, and this was something Jacob definitely didn’t want anybody to know about.  Mama would take the amulet away from him before he even got a chance to do anything with it, if she knew.
     The horrible idea of Mama getting the amulet was enough to settle it.  There was no way Jacob was letting that happen.  He decided Joey would be alright, and tiptoed quietly across the faded yellow linoleum to the back door.  As an afterthought he paused to grab a chunk of stale cornbread from the pan on top of the stove.    It was two days old, but he was hungry, and he wasn’t that fussy about breakfast.  
     He shut the screen door slowly behind him, careful not to let the rusty hinges squeak too loud.  It didn’t seem to matter how often he oiled them, that high-pitched squeal always came back in a few days.  He listened to make sure the house was still quiet, and then set off purposefully across the pasture.
     The grass was still soaked with cold rain, making him shiver when his feet sunk in.  The water washed off all the grime from the house, turning his toes a bright pink from the chill. 
     He finished wolfing down the cornbread before he reached the spot on the far side of the pasture that he was aiming for.  The bottom strand of barbed wire had rusted in two at that point, making it easy to crawl under the loose middle strand without much trouble, at least when the ground was dry.  He and Joey had done it lots of times, and their feet had scuffed a wide track of bare ground.  Today there was a shallow mudhole full of red clay that oozed up between his toes like jelly. 
     He didn’t feel like getting muddy that morning, so instead he pushed down the middle strand and gingerly climbed through the narrow slot between it and the top wire.  Carelessness led to ripped clothes, and that was the last thing Jacob wanted.  He was hoping to get a new pair of jeans and a shirt or two before school started, but he knew it wasn’t a sure thing.  Mama’s finances were as changeable as her moods, and there was no telling what shape either one of them would be in from day to day.  That’s why it was best to be careful with what you already had.
     The piney woods beyond the fence were morning silent.  Every footstep crunched wetly on dead vines and pine straw, and Jacob could hear the faint sound of the sawmill planer two miles away.  
     Muddy pools of water popped up all around him as he got close to the creek, but Jacob paid no mind to that.  He knew the path, and even when he had to wade through the spots where it was flooded, he wasn’t deterred.  By and by the trail curved away northward, following the little valley up into the mountains, and before long he came to higher and drier ground again. 
      At one place, an outcrop of stone jutted out over the creek, with a beautiful view of almost the whole valley to the south and a deep swimming hole underneath where you could cannonball off the rock if you were brave enough, and beyond it there was the wooded mountainside where no one ever went.  That’s where Jacob was headed.
      He and Joey had named that place Black Rock, though Jacob couldn’t really remember why.  It didn’t really look black, except when it was wet.  It was Joey’s favorite spot when the weather was nice, because there were lots of lizards and bugs to catch while they basked in the sun, and there was a sandy beach beside the creek that was perfect for castle building.  Jacob liked to go there and read or throw rocks even when Joey wasn’t with him, because it was a good place to be alone with his thoughts.  But today he had other things in mind.
 A low growl of thunder rolled through the heavy pine woods, reminding him that the rain might not be over quite yet.  It sounded like it was only a matter of time before he got drenched, and he started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the house after all.
      He hesitated, torn between wanting to find out about the amulet and not wanting to get soaked.  Eventually curiosity turned out to be stronger though, so he continued on his way.  If it started to rain too bad, he could always stand under a tree.  It wasn’t quite ten minutes later when he finally stood on top of the big stone outcrop.
      The castle he and Joey had built last week on the sand bar had melted into a shapeless blob coated with pockmarks from the rain, and there were deer tracks coming down to the water to drink.  Little bits of embe dded mica twinkled on the surface of the Rock, which was still dark and wet in most places. 
      Jacob pulled the amulet out of his pocket and toyed with it.  The jewelled silver glittered like broken glass, even on a cloudy day.  The chain slipped through his fingers like ice, not picking up the slightest bit of dirt from his muddy hands.  It was a beautiful piece of work, whoever made it.  Strangely enough, there was no clasp or catch on it as you would have expected to find on a necklace.  The chain was made all in one continuous piece.  The only way to put it on was to slip it over your head.
      Jacob hesitated before doing that.  He wasn’t on good terms with pain in any form, and he still remembered what had happened to his thumb earlier.  It had only happened that once, to be sure, but what if the same thing happened to his neck or chest?  He wasn’t keen to find out.  But an amulet is meant to be worn, and there was so much he needed to know. . . With a deep breath, he whisked the chain over his head before he could change his mind. 
      It hung lightly around his neck, the silver disk laying flat against his heart.  He grasped it in his hand and held it as far away from his body as he could before he tried anything else with it.  Might as well be as careful as possible.
      He was coated with mud and dirt from the flooded bottoms, and he could feel scattered smudges of thick red clay slowly pulling hair as they dried on bare skin.  His face was slick with oily sweat, curling down in streamers from his forehead.  This gave him an idea for his first experiment.
      “I wish I was clean,” he said, imagining himself just that way.  Again he felt nothing at all, but when he looked down every particle of dirt had vanished from his body.  His clothes were cool and fresh, and even his teeth felt newly brushed.  Jacob smiled with pleasure, more confident now.  His eye fell on a nearby rock.
      “Come here,” he commanded it, holding out his right hand.  The rock trembled and then gracefully floated into his outstretched hand.  Jacob laughed with delight, throwing the rock into the creek and running farther up the path into the woods, looking for more things to work his magic on.  He’d always been afraid to go very far that way because Mama had told him there were bears, but today he felt ready to fight bare-handed with a mountain lion.  He was a force to be reckoned with now, and he silently dared anything to attack him.
      It was much drier the higher he went, and the mixed pine woods slowly gave way to stands of hickory and white oak.  The path wandered for miles up and over Jack Mountain, and Jacob wasn’t sure where it finally came out.  Now and then he kicked rocks off the path, and a few times sent them flying over the treetops with a flourish of his amulet.  Nothing could have knocked a chip off his delight or erased one single particle of his satisfaction.  He played with the amulet fondly, dreaming such dreams as would have seemed unbelievable just yesterday.  But now!  Now all things were possible.
      He abruptly came out into a little meadow where the path petered out, and there he paused to catch his breath.  The summer sun had scorched the tall grass into a wide field of standing hay, which not even the recent rains had been able to bring back to life.  The dirt was pale and rocky, full of little white stones that looked like the bleaching skulls of field mice.  This was as far as Jacob had ever been before.  He knew the path picked up again somewhere on the other side, but he decided that could wait for another day when the weather was nicer.  Late summer was always either hot and dry or else muggy as a wet glove, and Jacob didn’t like either one. 
      A wild thought entered his mind, and he began to smile at the very audacity of it.  His feet carried him slowly to the center of the little meadow and his left hand reached up to clasp the amulet curiously.  Could he do it?
      “Give me spring,” he whispered, conjuring up the vivid image in his mind.  Before the last word fell from his lips, the meadow began to change before his eyes.  The dry grass broke up into wispy fragments quickly swept away by the wind.  Dormant seeds burst into new life in a spreading pool of green around his feet, sending up pale green tendrils already heavy with the buds of flowers.  Lavender stars peppered the ground with a sprinkle of blooms, and chains of golden daffodils appeared across the far side of the meadow.
      For a second he was awed, and stood staring at the changes he’d made.  He thought about gathering up armfuls of the daffodils and carrying them back home to brighten up the drab old house just a little.  Mama liked flowers, although she might. . .  well, what would she do, actually?  When he stopped to think about it, he realized he was dreaming with his head in the sand.  Mama wasn’t a fool.  She knew it wasn’t the right time of year for daffodils, and at the very least she’d wonder where he got them.  And then what would he say? 
      It wasn’t just the daffodils, of course.  Anything strange that happened around the house might cause problems.  Mama was paranoid, and he knew from experience that it didn’t take much to set her off.  The least careless remark, the most minor incident; any of those things could cause an explosion.
      It came to mind again that Joey would probably be the worst problem he had when it came to keeping the secret.  He was seldom out of Jacob’s company, and he was way too curious about things.  He also couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.  He just didn’t understand the need.  
      The cool wind had dried a sweaty trail of hair against the curve of his cheek, and Jacob absentmindedly brushed it away.  He turned his back on Spring, having temporarily lost his taste for any more playing around.   He unraveled a sprig of honeysuckle from his ankle and headed back for the downward path, feeling deflated.  What good was magic if you couldn’t use it?  
     He walked quietly into the leaf-scented shade of the hickory trees, paying no attention to anything above the tips of his toes.  He was lost too deep in thought.  He decided it was probably about time he headed home.  Joey would be waking up soon, and he didn’t like the thought of leaving him alone with Mama for too long.  It wasn’t safe. 
     There was one more thing to do before he went home, though.
     When he got to the Rock, Jacob went to a gnarled oak tree that leaned dangerously far out over the creek; his well trusted hiding place.  The water was licking hungrily at the handful of roots it still had, and one of these days it would fall over.  Maybe today, if the rain kept on much longer.  Jacob slipped his hand inside the highest knothole he could reach, and pulled out an old Crown Royal bag, listening to the coins jingle inside.  Jacob liked Crown Royal bags.  The purple cloth and gold trim made him feel rich, like a king. 
      Feeling rich and being rich were two different things, of course.  Jacob’s hoard contained exactly eighteen dollars and sixteen cents, painstakingly collected over the past two months.  Quarters left over from trips to the store, nickels and dimes salvaged from sidewalks and baseboards, all of it had gone into his hiding place.  Jacob had learned to be tight as treebark with his money, but sometimes there were things he didn’t mind spending it on, and now was one of those times.  It was Joey’s birthday next week.
     Jacob stuffed the bag in his pocket, and he felt a fat raindrop land on his arm just as he turned to go.  He looked up at the sky uneasily.  Dark clouds were piled up like play-doh in the west, and the wind was starting to pick up again.  From where he stood, he could see rain falling from the clouds in gray sheets maybe half a mile away, and it was moving his direction.
     He made a run for it, gambling on the chance he could make it to the house before the rain did.  Jacob was a fast runner, and if he’d been wearing his shoes he might possibly have made it in time.     
 He was barefoot, though, and that slowed him down just a bit.  He was crawling through the fence when the rain caught him, causing him to tear a long rip in his t-shirt and leave a bloody scratch on his back.  He cussed under his breath and ran across the pasture to the back door.  He wasn’t quite soaking wet, but close enough not to make much difference.
      He scuffed his feet and made sure to let the screen door slam when he walked into the kitchen.  If he made a little noise he could let Mama know he was back without actually having to speak to her.  He noticed the back of her head where she sat on the couch watching one of her soaps.  On the screen, an actress was passionately kissing a character Jacob had never seen before, and Mama seemed rapt.  She either didn’t notice him or didn’t bother to say anything.  Jacob didn’t really care which.
      He didn’t see Joey with her, so he slipped upstairs as quickly and quietly as possible.  Another quick touch of his amulet wiped out the creak in the seventh step just as his foot touched it, and a third swept the dust from them all.  He thought about mending some of the cracks in the wallpaper but soon decided that would be too obvious.  Caution, caution was the thing to remember.  He could always say he’d fixed the step if anyone noticed, but the wallpaper couldn’t be handled like that.
      Jacob was a little curious when he found no Joey in their room either, but the mystery didn’t concern him that much yet.  He sat in his rocking chair by the window, daydreaming about all the great things he would do.  He was still wet from the rain, so he used the amulet to dry off.  The metal had picked up his body heat and lay almost unnoticed against his skin, just  a round flattened lump under his t-shirt. 
      He traced the shape with his forefinger, caressing it and fiddling with the chain.  The first shock of disappointment at having to keep things secret had begun to wear off now, and he was in the mood to play some more, if he could keep things quiet.  Mama was wrapped up in her soaps, and with Joey gone it seemed like a good time to try something.  But what to do?
      A tiny fleck of paint on one of the windowpanes caught his eye, and with a snap of his fingers it was gone.  The windowsill was already as clean as he could scrub it, but upon further inspection he decided it still lacked something.  He erased the paint off the surface and polished the wood underneath so that it almost glowed.  Jacob contemplated this change for a second, then dyed the faded curtains a rich midnight blue, at the same time mending every tiny run and spot-hole.
      The colorful window was in such contrast to the rest of the room that Jacob decided to try some other things, just to see how it would look.  He could always put it back the way it was.
      He turned his attention to the wallpaper, which was cracked and peeling in spots.  Some of the places were discreetly patched with scotch tape, but Jacob thought that looked pathetic now.  He soon fixed the problem, restoring the paper to like-new condition.  He bleached the fly-specked ceiling to bright white, and polished the hardwood floor.  He made up the bed and fixed the tatters in  Papaw’s picture.  Soon, the brass doorknob glittered like gold, every piece of clothing in the closet became brand new, and the fishbowl became sparkling clear.  Even the goldfish looked bigger and brighter.  Within minutes, Jacob had changed the room utterly, and he could hardly contain his pleasure.
      He knew it couldn’t stay like that, of course, and with a disappointed sigh he changed everything back the way it had been before.  Almost.  He didn’t undo the floor polish or the new curtains, and he didn’t dirty the fishbowl or dull the goldfish.  He also left Papaw’s picture alone.  He thought those things were small enough that they wouldn’t be noticed, and if somebody did notice then he could explain them fairly easily.  If he was slow and careful enough, he thought he might even fix the whole house little by little when Mama wasn’t paying attention.  He had high hopes.
      But in the meantime, he slipped the amulet back inside his shirt and got up to go look for Joey.  Jacob had been home nearly thirty minutes and he ought to have turned up by now.
      He almost skipped the seventh step on his way down before remembering that he didn’t have to anymore, then he deliberately  set his whole weight on it just to listen to the silence.  He fixed two of the worst cracks in the wallpaper and removed a scratch on the bannister without missing a beat, and then slipped through the kitchen as quiet as a whisper to stand hesitating at the entrance to the living room.  Mama was still watching her soap, and Jacob waited carefully for a commercial break before clearing his throat.
      Mama didn’t look back at him.
      “What?” she asked irritably.
      “Um, I just wondered if you knew where Joey is, Mama,” he asked in the humblest and most respectful voice he possessed.  Mama hated disrespect above all other crimes.
      “I don’t know where he is.  Go find him yourself if you want him,” she said, in a tone that meant the subject was closed.  Jacob mumbled something that might have sounded like a thank-you, and then quickly retreated.
      He searched rapidly through the house, checking all the places big enough for Joey to be hiding in.  He went back upstairs, looking in the hall closet and even venturing into Mama’s room.  No Joey anywhere.  Jacob was beginning to get a little scared, and finally thought of the attic.  Joey was afraid to go up there by himself, but he would have known it was the only place he couldn’t be found.
      Jacob quickly climbed up the narrow steps and poked his head through the door.  It was almost too dark to see anything, so he grabbed a rafter in one hand and felt his way forward.  There was a little light coming in from the door behind him, and a little more from the louvered windows at each end, so when his eyes adjusted he could make things out a little better.  The attic was full of junk which nobody had bothered to clean out in years.
      Jacob explored the boxes and piles carefully, and he finally found Joey curled up in a ball in one corner, almost hidden behind stacks and stacks of old yellow newspapers.  Jacob could barely see him except when he moved, and he seemed to be making no effort to come out.  He realized Joey probably couldn’t tell who he was in the dark.
      “It’s me, Beebo.  Come out and tell me what’s wrong,” he said.  That got results.  Jacob staggered and barely kept from falling backwards into a mountain of rusty gas pipes heaped up behind him, almost bowled over by what felt like a human cannonball.  Joey wouldn’t do anything but cry for a long time, and Jacob gave up trying to ask him anything.  It could wait.
      Instead, he sat down and held him till he stopped crying before trying to talk to him again.  Joey still wasn’t having any of that just yet, though, and the tears threatened to start all over again.
      Eventually he calmed down to the point that Jacob was able to pick him up and carry him out of the attic, and that was progress at least.  It wasn’t until they came out into the hall that he saw Joey’s left eye was almost swollen shut.
      Jacob went cold inside.  Black eyes don’t come from falling- only fists can do that.  And the only thing that would make Joey climb up into the attic by himself was the fear of something worse if he didn’t.
      Jacob said nothing, and took Joey to their room.  When he got there, he shut the door and sat down on the bed.  He knew, in a way, that this was just as much his fault as it was Mama’s, because he was the one who had wanted to go off and leave Joey alone with her.  He knew better.  He couldn’t pretend he didn’t.
      “Let me look at your eye, Beebo,” he whispered.  Joey turned his face up, looking at him with one bright blue eye.  He couldn’t see out of the other one, which gave him a strange, lopsided look. 
      Jacob didn’t care about being secret anymore.  He closed his eyes, and imagined Joey’s eye the way it was supposed to be, and kissed it.  And when he looked again, there was no trace of the black eye left.  Joey looked at him soberly and laid his head on his brother’s shoulder, and then it was Jacob’s turn to cry.

                                             *    *    *    *    *    *    *
     
      “Where’d you go this mornin’, Jacob?” Joey asked him finally, when both of them were a little calmer.
      “Aw, nowhere,” he replied, not wanting to say anything about the amulet or the money either one.
      “Yes you did.  I saw you cross the pasture and you was gone forever,” Joey contradicted.  Jacob sighed.  So much for secrecy.
      “I had to go up to the Rock for a little while, bubba, that’s all,” he said.  That was all Joey really needed to know.
      “You stayed gone too long.  Mama was mad cause you left and didn’t tell her,” Joey told him.  Jacob tasted a fresh surge of guilt when he heard that.
      “I’m sorry, bubba.  I won’t do that anymore, okay?” he promised.  Jacob figured a little humility never hurt anybody, and Joey smiled.
      Before either of them could say anything else, they were startled by the sound of the front door slamming, and then the sound of Mama’s old green Monte Carlo spinning out of the mudhole it had made in the driveway.  Jacob quickly looked out the window to see which way she went.
      He saw the car turn north on the highway.  There was nothing that direction except a twenty mile drive to the nearest liquor store at the county line, or a little farther to the nearest bar.  That meant she wouldn’t be back at least for a couple of hours, maybe not even for the rest of the night.  Jacob couldn’t help feeling a little better now that she was gone.
      “Come on, Beebo, let’s go clean up the kitchen and make something to eat,” he said, with a bit more satisfaction in his voice than he really meant to show.  He picked Joey up again and carried him piggyback downstairs to the kitchen.  As soon as they got there Jacob sent him into the living room to watch cartoons.  He’d learned from experience that Joey usually got in the way more than he helped.
      That done, Jacob grabbed a wet dishrag and mopped up the meatball, which had somehow gotten crushed and was now smeared greasily across the floor in a log maroon trail.  The empty vodka bottle by the refrigerator was quickly thrown in the trash, and he was in the middle of sweeping up the beer and cigarette butts when he realized there was no reason why he should have to work so hard.
      He looked through the door into the living room, where Joey was absorbed in Tom and Jerry.  He hadn’t seemed to think much about what Jacob had done to his eye, but cleaning the kitchen was different.  He might remember that, if he saw anything.  Jacob stealthily reached in his pocket and touched the amulet, then closed his eyes and imagined the kitchen to be spotlessly clean.  When he opened them a minute later, you would never have guessed it had ever been messy.  Not a speck or a stain was on anything, almost like someone had scrubbed the whole room with a toothbrush.
     Jacob laughed to himself again, and started fixing their lunch.
      
                                        *    *    *    *    *    *    *

      There were limits to his power, of course, and over the next few days he gradually discovered what they were.  He couldn’t affect anything more than about a thousand feet away, and he couldn’t create something out of nothing.  He couldn’t bring things back to life if they were dead, and he couldn’t affect anybody’s thoughts or feelings.  But he could move things, and he could change one thing into another (if he had the same amount of mass), and he could usually heal wounds on living things and make them grow.  He was sure there was still a lot he didn’t know.  He often wished the amulet had come with an instruction manual. 
      If anyone had visited the south side of Jack Mountain about that time, they would have thought something very strange was going on.  Jacob remembered what he’d done to the little meadow that first day, and in his enthusiasm he decided to beautify the whole area.  He worked unceasingly on the land all round Black Rock, and it gradually became a radically different place than it had ever been before.  The first thing he did was to kill all the bugs and snakes and creepy-crawlies.  He destroyed every thorn and every thistle, every weed and every wasp.  Nothing dangerous or ugly was allowed to invade his little kingdom.  It was reserved exclusively for all things bright and beautiful, and he set an invisible barrier to keep any new pests from getting in.  
      About forty acres was the limit of his power to maintain all this, but within that circle the land was becoming like a page from a fairy tale in which every day is high spring and there is no stain to be found on a single leaf or stone.  It was almost perfect now, with only a few little touch-ups remaining.
      He was planting white oaks today, setting acorns with one hand and then making them grow into tall trees in less than a minute.  He kept one eye on his work and the other on Joey, who was playing in the dirt not far away.  Jacob had gradually lost his fear of Mama taking the amulet away from him (Just let her try, he said to himself), and as he got bolder he didn’t care so much about letting Joey see him do things.  So far he seemed to accept it without question, like it was the most natural and ordinary thing in the world, and he hadn’t asked how any of it was possible.  Jacob was still careful to wear the amulet under his shirt and never mention it, but he was beginning to feel secure in his invincible power.  He never took it off anymore, not even when he slept.
      He looked down the trail at Joey playing in the dirt, and with a half-smile lifted him off the ground and dusted him off.  Joey had loved that at first, but he was getting tired of it. 
      “Put me down!” he cried, struggling uselessly against the breeze.  The sun was beginning to slant low across the ravine, and it was almost time to call it a day.
      “I think I might just carry you home that way, Beebo,” Jacob replied, teasing him.  He wasn’t serious, but from Joey’s howl you would have thought he was pulling hair.  Jacob floated him closer and set him down on his feet.
      “I didn’t mean it, silly boy,” he said, and they walked home with no more ado. 
      The house looked totally different than it had just a few days ago.  Jacob had fixed things the way he liked them, and the whole place looked gleaming and new.  Mama couldn’t help but notice, but she walked around the house in a daze, not seeming to comprehend what was going on all around her.  She knew Jacob was doing it all, but she couldn’t figure out how.  He never let anyone catch even a glimpse of the amulet, and he never changed anything unless she was gone.  If he hadn’t known better, he could have sworn he saw fear in her eyes when she looked at him.  But whatever she thought, she didn’t say anything.  Not yet.
      There was another reason why she didn’t suspect the amulet, though.  Jacob had found a safer way to get things done than just wishing them so.  He made gold.
      It didn’t matter what from.  He generally picked up a handful of gravel and turned the pieces into nuggets.  They always turned out smaller than the pebbles he started with, but that was okay. 
      He’d tried making diamonds but somehow that never seemed to work right, maybe because he didn’t know enough about what he was doing.  He could make one, to be sure, but they always seemed to be badly flawed and worthless.  He’d taken some of the ones he made to a jewelry shop to ask, and that was what they’d told him.  So Jacob gave up on diamonds and stuck to gold.  He never had any problems with that.
      Selling it for cash had been a real problem at first.  Jacob had collected a sack of nuggets that must have weighed twenty pounds, and people tended to get mighty curious about where a fifteen year old kid came up with that much gold.
      He’d finally sold his bag of nuggets at a pawn shop.  He made a deal with the owner that as long as he asked no questions and paid in cash, Jacob would sell him the gold for half price.  The man was no fool, and probably thought he was robbing a kid blind, but Jacob didn’t care.  He could have built a whole palace of gold if he’d wanted to (well, eventually), so the cut rate didn’t annoy him at all.
      He stored his cash in one of the old trunks in the attic, where Mama couldn’t find it.  Some of it he’d spent on things for the house and stuff for him and Joey, but he still had close to eighty thousand dollars stuffed away up there, if he counted right.  It was a good feeling, knowing that.
      He used his newfound wealth to do all kinds of things he’d never had a chance to do before.  He bought anything he wanted, without even looking at the price.  He went places and hung out with people who would barely have spoken to him a week ago.  Of course he knew most of them liked him because he was generous with his money, but for the time being he honestly didn’t care.  He was enjoying himself too much.
      On Friday night there was a football game at the high school, and Jacob decided to go.  Mama was working the night shift, and Jacob had hired a babysitter for Joey, even though he was supposed to be watching him himself.  .  .  something totally unheard of before.  Mama probably wouldn’t have liked it if she’d known, but Jacob no longer paid any attention to what she thought.
      He sat in the front of the stands and cheered as loud as anyone, eating hot dogs and popcorn to his heart’s content.  He was sorely tempted a few times to make the ball fly just a little farther and help the team score a touchdown, but he didn’t meddle. 
      For the most part.  When he saw a chance to make Bobby Lee Jameson fall flat on his face in the mud, Jacob simply couldn’t resist.  Bobby Lee was the most arrogant, stuck-up bully in the whole school, and Jacob enjoyed getting a chance to make everyone laugh at  him for a change.  In fact he probably enjoyed it more than he should have, because afterward he felt sorry for doing it.           
      The game was over at ten, and Jacob decided to walk home for a change.  He could have gotten a ride if he wanted one, but he felt like being alone for a while.  He paused next to Bobby Lee’s old truck in the parking lot and gave him four new mud grip tires and some chrome wheels, to make up for embarrassing him.  He’d never know where they came from, but he probably wouldn’t question it much either.  Jacob felt like things were square between them at that point, and he walked away quickly before anybody noticed him standing there. 
      The night breezes were cool against his skin, carrying with them the faint scent of late-blooming jasmine from somebody’s yard.  He felt at peace with himself and and the world, and in the mood to do a good deed if anything happened to present itself.  Giving Bobby Lee the tires and wheels had made him wonder what else he might do for other people.
      He came to Annie Summerford’s house, and on impulse he left a hundred dollar bill in her mailbox.  Miss Annie had once been the town librarian, but Jacob knew she was old and poor now.  He tried not to carry around a whole lot of cash, but if he lost it he wasn’t too worried.  He could always get more.
      He passed the store and the Baptist church without seeing anything worth doing, and then the graveyard.  He removed a smudge of gray lichen from a tombstone, but that wasn’t very satisfying.  He wanted to do something more dramatic than that.
      A few stray leaves were beginning to fall, more from the heat than the season.  The colors wouldn’t really change much till a little before Halloween, and that was still almost two months away.  Winter was a tired beast in these parts.
      He crossed the river bridge, and saw his Aunt Carolyn’s place was dark and silent beside the river.  A few really determined weeds were growing up through her cattle guard, and Jacob quickly killed them for her.
      A gibbous moon was shining through the trees behind him, flooding the highway with pools of silver.  Jacob waded through them, following his footsteps home.  On another day he might have been frustrated by the lack of opportunities to do anything for people.  You would think there were more needy folks in the world than just one old woman.  But tonight he was feeling good, and it would have taken a lot to darken his mood.  Maybe another day, he thought to himself.
      He opened the back door and went into the house.  The babysitter was on the couch watching a movie, and he paid her and sent her home.  Then he locked the door and went up to bed without a sound, not bothering to turn on any lights.  There was enough moonlight to see by.
      He changed into a more comfortable t-shirt and some shorts, then laid down on the bed beside the already sleeping Joey, listening to the old house creak and settle for the night.
      Jacob was happier than he could ever remember being in his whole life, and he foresaw no end to the good times and the good work he could do with the amulet in his hand.  He’d barely scratched the surface.  He had power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, and what could he not do now?  The amulet had been the greatest thing that ever happened to him. 
      Jacob smiled, and then slowly drifted off to sleep.
      
                                           *    *    *    *    *    *    *

      In the morning the goldfish was dead.
      The bowl had turned gray with pollution, so dense and thick that nothing could be seen through the murk.
      Jacob got up and quickly threw it away, promising himself to get a new one in a few days.  He wasn’t going to try to pretend it was the same one, but when something died it was usually better to replace it quickly.
      He didn’t think much about the dead fish at first, but he was soon to get a nasty surprise that gave him plenty of reason to think about it. 
      It was a glorious Saturday morning in the meantime, though, with just a little scent of fall hanging crisply in the air.  It was exactly seven days since he’d first found the amulet, but it seemed to Jacob like that was ages and centuries ago, so far in the past that it was hard to remember.  He was happy and felt like going out and doing something. 
      He changed clothes and woke up his brother.
      “Come on, Beebo, get up!  Time to go!” he said cheerfully.  Joey groaned, and Jacob tried tickling him.  That usually worked, but not today.  Joey just rolled out of reach and pulled the covers back over his head.
      “What’s wrong with you, sleepyhead?” Jacob laughed.
      “Don’t feel good,” Joey finally said.
      “Well what’s wrong?  Does your stomach hurt, are you bleeding. . . what is it?” Jacob asked.
      “No, just don’t feel good,” Joey answered.  Jacob touched his forehead, but it didn’t feel especially warm.  Nothing was wrong, as far as he could tell.  Jacob really wanted to go finish growing his trees today, but he knew he couldn’t take Joey up there if he was sick, and Mama was working today.
      He went downstairs and called Aunt Carolyn to see if she could watch him for a while.  She was usually home on Saturdays.
      “Sure, I’ll be there in a minute,” she agreed.
      She was, and by the time she got there Jacob had to admit that Joey did look sickly.  He was pale and had dark circles under his eyes.
      Carolyn took him home with her, and Jacob promised to come fetch him later that afternoon.
      He felt a little bit guilty about going off elsewhere when Joey wasn’t feeling good, but he told himself Carolyn would take good care of him and it wouldn’t be for very long.  He sighed and headed up to Black Rock.
      Almost as soon as he crossed the invisible barrier between his protected land and the everyday world, he noticed that something wasn’t right.  Many of the leaves on the trees were yellowed and withered, and some even looked dead.  In places he noticed a jelly-like brown fungus growing on the branches, which had certainly not been there before.
      Jacob was curious, but not really too worried yet.  He used the amulet to kill the fungus and make the plants grow healthy new leaves, but there was nothing he could do about the dead ones.  He turned those to dust instead.  There were only a few of those, so the gaps were not very noticeable.  He worked as he walked along, patiently fixing whatever was messed up. 
      It was strangely silent in the woods that day, a fact which he didn’t notice for quite some time.  But presently, as he worked his way up the path, he found a dead cardinal on the ground.  It was brilliant red, even more so than normal.  Jacob had given it a little extra color at some point, just to make it look nicer.  It was hard to say what had killed it.  It didn’t seem hurt, other than the fact that it was dead.  Jacob turned it to dust as he had the withered trees, and it was then that he noticed there were no birdsongs.
      All that day, Jacob saw almost nothing living except the trees.  He came across several dead or dying birds, and once a dead fox.  Jacob had changed all the animals in his little patch of woods in some way or other. . .  brightened their colors, made them bigger, given them blue eyes or softer fur or something like that.  All of them had been fine yesterday, but now everything seemed to be dying.  The trees were withering rapidly, too.  Even during the little time he’d spent in the area, the leaves had yellowed and dropped off a large number of them.  Even the grass was dying, and Jacob was finally starting to get worried. 
      He fought hard against the spreading destruction that had dropped like a stone into his peaceful kingdom, until he was exhausted from the battle.  He couldn’t keep up.  Barely did he grow a new tree before it began to die too, and within an hour it was a dead trunk like so many others.  He tried healing a few of the birds that were still alive and found that it lasted only a few minutes before the bird was dead.  Jacob was at his wit’s end, unable to figure out what was happening or how he could stop it.  His beloved sanctuary was beginning to look like a wasteland.  By sundown, there was nothing left but dead sticks and bare dust, like a bomb had exploded and destroyed every living thing. 
      Just as the sun slipped below the horizon, Jacob abruptly gave up all hope of doing any more good up there.  He ran down the trail towards home, paying no more attention to the dead and blasted region he had spent so much effort to cultivate.
      When he got home, he went directly to the phone.  All he cared about right now was getting hold of Aunt Carolyn, because a horrible new fear had gripped his mind.  He got her voice mail three times, and that only made it worse.
      He left the house, running down the road to his aunt’s place as fast as he could go.  There was no car in the driveway, but he hoped against hope that maybe somebody was home, that maybe Carolyn had just gone to the store for something.  He came to the front door, still breathing hard from his run, and found a note pinned to the mailbox.  He snatched it, and slowly read what was written there.
      
      Jacob, if you read this, we’re gone to the hospital.  Joey is very sick.  I already called your mother and she’s coming up here.  Stay home and we’ll try to call you later.
      
      That was all it said,  but that was enough.  Because he knew what was wrong by now, without a doubt.  Every living thing he’d touched with the amulet had sickened and died, and he had used it on Joey to heal his black eye. 
      Which he wouldn’t have had in the first place, if Jacob hadn’t been so careless.  So whose fault would it really be, if he.  .  .
      Jacob couldn’t bring himself to even finish thinking that thought, and he sat down on Carolyn’s porch and wept for the second time in a week.
      Presently he went home and sat in the gleaming kitchen beside the phone, anxious not to miss any calls.  He soon found that doing nothing was unbearable, so he fixed a frozen pizza and ate as much of it as he had the heart for.  Then he wandered slowly through the quiet rooms in silence, touching things here and there.  The house was like a palace now, almost.  Jacob hadn’t refused himself anything he wanted, from marble floors to crystal chandeliers, and anything and everything in between.  It didn’t seem so wonderful now,  and he would have gladly traded all of it just to have Joey home safe.  What were money and things, compared to that?
      Eventually Carolyn did call, and the news wasn’t good.  Joey was still hanging on, but just barely, and she said he might not   make it till morning.  Jacob stayed calmer at that news than he thought he would.  It might have been because he already expected it, or it  might have been because some things are too terrible even for tears.  Maybe both.
      He got off the phone with his aunt not long after that.  He felt dead inside, and couldn’t think of anything else to say.  He knew he must have seemed heartless, but right then he didn’t have the heart to care.
      Jacob pulled the amulet out from under his shirt and looked at it with hatred, wishing he’d never found it in the first place.  If Joey died then Jacob would never forgive himself.  He studied the medallion forlornly, praying that he might find something new to show him a way to save his brother.  But the only things he saw were the gleaming silver and the seven bright gems, and the flowing script around the edge. 
      Jacob seized on the writing.  He’d never cared what it said before, because it didn’t seem to matter much.  But now those unreadable words became the most important thing in the world, because they were the only clue he had.  Jacob quickly wrote them down on paper.  There were three lines, and the writing was tiny.  He had to get out a magnifying glass to make sure he spelled them right.
      As soon as he had them, the first thing he did was go to his computer.  It was brand new, just bought two days ago with some of the cash from the gold.  Jacob had barely had time to even look at it yet, but it had Internet access, and that was all he cared about.
      He found a language translation website, where he quickly tried all the languages it offered, with no luck.  The language on the amulet wasn’t Latin, or Spanish, or French, or German, or Italian, or Portuguese, or Dutch.  Jacob knew it wasn’t Japanese or Arabic, because it was written with letters that were familiar to him, and those languages wouldn’t have been.
      He made a list of all the languages that were normally written with Roman letters, no matter how obscure they were, then crossed off the ones he’d already tried.  He was left with about ten he’d actually heard of before and maybe twice that many he hadn’t.  But which one was it?  And what if it was some dead language nobody even spoke anymore?
      As a last resort, he posted the words on an Internet message board about languages, asking what language they were and what they meant, and in the meantime he kept looking, without success.
      Thirty minutes later, a girl halfway around the world answered his question.  Jacob opened the message as fast as his fingers could click the mouse, and this is what he read:
      
      The language is Magyar, very old.  It says “Seven days you have the power.  Touch no living thing.  If the chain is broken, all is lost,”   Where you find this, buddy? 
      
      Jacob didn’t try to answer that question.  The girl wouldn’t have believed him anyway.  He wished bitterly that he’d known those three things a week ago. 
      Except, of course, he knew he could have known a week ago, if he’d only made the effort to try.  But he’d been careless about that too, and because of his carelessness Joey might die. 
      Jacob thought he knew what to do now though, if he understood the words right.  He prayed to God he wasn’t wrong.  He took the necklace of the amulet in both hands, closed his eyes, and then, with a hard yank, he snapped the chain.
      As always, there was no fanfare, nothing to show that the magic had worked.  Jacob heard and felt nothing except the breaking of the silver chain.  He opened his eyes, and found himself sitting on a stool in the attic, still holding the two tarnished ends of the necklace in his hands.  The trunk where he’d found it a week ago was open in front of him, and the cigar box was sitting on the corner.
      Jacob blinked stupidly, and had a surge of déjà vu so strong that he honestly wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t anymore.  He stood up, and found that he was wearing the same clothes he wore last Saturday, and he was barefooted.  He put the amulet in his pocket absentmindedly, and threaded his way through the junk until he reached the door.  Then he went downstairs.  He hardly dared to hope.
      He opened his bedroom door slowly.  Everything was just as it had always been before he found the amulet.  There was no trace of all the changes he’d made.  Jacob crept to the bed, still barely believing it, and pulled the edge of the blanket down. 
      There was Joey, still asleep with his thumb in his mouth, just the way he’d been when Jacob left him to go up to the attic last week.  Rain was beating in heavy sheets against the window glass.
      Jacob had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.  He still didn’t believe it and pinched himself again.  Did “all is lost” mean even the time that had passed since he found the amulet?  Apparently so.
      Jacob finally decided he didn’t care two cents about how or why it worked.  Joey was back, and he was safe, and that was all that mattered.  Joey made a vague sleepy sound  and moved closer to him, not really awake.  He settled comfortably against Jacob’s side and grew quiet again.  He was dreaming about something from the way his eyes moved, and Jacob smoothed down a cowlick in his soft golden hair with one hand. 
      “Love you, Beebo,” Jacob whispered, and then he laid down next to his sleeping brother and held him close for a long time.
      Jacob never forgot that lost week.  No one else remembered a bit of it, and there were times when Jacob himself started to wonder if he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.  But when such times came, he only had to look at the amulet and hold it in his hand, and he was sure.  It was powerless now, but he fixed the chain and always wore it from then on, to remind him of the things that really matter.  And that was the best magic of all.